Ms L Mankan, counsel For the v Respondent — 2019

Ms D Wolfslag brought an unlawful deductions from wages claim against Atos IT Services UK Ltd arising from the July 2017 salary review. The parties agreed that if the claimant had not had an H2 2016 appraisal, only her H1 2016 rating of 3 could be relied on and she would have been entitled to the salary increase to £34,400 per annum; if the H2 appraisal had taken place and resulted in a score of 2, the claim would fail.

Employment Judge Elliott found, on a balance of probabilities, that no H2 2016 appraisal meeting took place in 2016 or at all. The tribunal relied on the absence of any manager sign-off on the H2 form, the lack of individual scores or comments, the late chase-up email of 8 December 2016, the failure to disclose Mr Russell's own appraisal tracking records, and inconsistencies in Mr Russell's evidence about what happened at the alleged meeting.

The tribunal also found that the respondent failed to investigate the key disputed factual issue during the grievance process and failed to offer a right of appeal on the grievance outcome. It held that these were unreasonable failures to comply with the ACAS Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, and applied a 15% uplift under s.207A TULR(C)A 1992.

The parties agreed the underlying deductions amounted to £6,687.31, and the uplift was £1,003.10, producing a total award of £7,690.41. The tribunal therefore recorded that the claim succeeded and that the respondent was to pay that sum to the claimant.